As the Internet became prevalent and accessible from almost anywhere, the choice of connectivity to the Internet grew as well. Corporate boundaries expanded beyond the physical campus network, Roaming employees could connect to the corporate network from almost anywhere using a Virtual Private Network (VPN). An employee could be on his desktop in the office; at home on his home machine; at an airport, a cybercafe, or a hotel room with his laptop; or at a Kiosk computer and he/she could still connect to the corporate network and access emails as well as other useful data.
This extremely powerful connectivity is extremely dangerous. Being able to access emails and corporate data from a Kiosk or a cybercafe is very useful and convenient, however, it has risks. The computer being used is not under the control of the user at all times. The computer or kiosk could monitor the data that comes through. It could include various types of spyware, which logs keystrokes, or interactions. This makes anything and everything an employee does on the network vulnerable to be captured regardless of whether or not VPN is used. Even if the computer is the user's own laptop, if the access point has spyware on it, what the employee does could still be compromised. Furthermore, using the captured data, the entire corporate network may become vulnerable. Even without an active spyware application, by showing what sites a user visited (history) and what cookies were activated, significant amounts of information can be obtained.
Security threats at the end-point computers have been a key issue for many enterprises and computer users. However with the network boundaries disappearing, the threat of inadvertent exposure of the corporate data is greater than ever before. Therefore, a better way of securing data in an environment where the computer or the network is not under the user's control at all times would be advantageous.